Dear Editor, Speakers at our summer schools are traditionally given considerable latitude in matters of ideology and historical interpretation. Even so, the Minister for Health, Dr Leo Varadaker TD, was pushing it a bit in his address to the MacGill Summer School.
Near the start of a long speech, he cites the question: “how did Ireland come to have one of the best health services in the world?” The minister ignores the contribution of the Catholic Church and, in particular, the religious nursing orders for over 170 years. Instead, he refers to “the power of vested interests from professional groups, to religious and other bodies that cloaked themselves in the language of morality and tradition, and frustrated even the most tepid patient-centred reforms”.
The minister will have visited St Vincent’s University Teaching Hospital (SVUTH) many times. Were he to stop for a moment at the plaque commemorating Mother Mary Aikenhead, he would read that St Vincent’s, which she established as early as 1834, was founded to serve the sick and the poor “of every sect and every creed, offering to all equal advantages and equal attention”. He could spend a very instructive half an hour walking along the ground floor corridors of St Vincent’s reflecting on the photographs of medical and nursing leaders, members of her order, who cared for patients and helped train generations of Irish and overseas healthcare professionals .
He could do the same with the Mater hospital and the Mercy hospital in Cork, established by the Mercy Order in 1858. Well, the list goes on. The women who founded, funded and staffed these facilities were inspired by their faith. They were innovators and leaders with an extraordinary international vision – Mercy nuns nursed soldiers in the Crimean war. They didn’t simply talk about “equality and access” – they delivered. Their legacy is embedded in the DNA of the services of which he is, for a while, trustee.
Yours etc.,
Professor Ray Kinsella,
Ashford, Co. Wicklow.